Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 23.128.96.18 as permitted sender) client-ip=23.128.96.18;
Message-ID: <572b03bdc3eed286c5ed20887d42f674bd93336e.camel@perches.com>
Subject: Re: linux-kernel: Unused static inline functions
From:   Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
To:     Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>,
        Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@lip6.fr>,
        Dan Carpenter <error27@gmail.com>
Cc:     LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        clang-built-linux <clang-built-linux@googlegroups.com>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Date:   Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:22:01 -0700
In-Reply-To: <CAKwvOdnW-xvSnT3RS8MWufyp+3=NM-Mb+bv0r2u2soNnyVvXBg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1583509304-28508-1-git-send-email-cai@lca.pw>
         <CAKwvOd=V44ksbiffN5UYw-oVfTK_wdeP59ipWANkOUS_zavxew@mail.gmail.com>
         <a7503afc9d561ae9c7116b97c7a960d7ad5cbff9.camel@perches.com>
         <442b7ace85a414c6a01040368f05d6d219f86536.camel@perches.com>
         <CAKwvOdmdaDL4bhJc+7Xms=f4YXDw-Rr+WQAknd0Jv6UWOBUcEA@mail.gmail.com>
         <4603e761a5f39f4d97375e1e08d20d720c526341.camel@perches.com>
         <CAKwvOdnW-xvSnT3RS8MWufyp+3=NM-Mb+bv0r2u2soNnyVvXBg@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
User-Agent: Evolution 3.34.1-2 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

(adding Julia Lawall and Dan Carpenter who may have ideas too)

On Thu, 2020-04-23 at 11:57 -0700, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> I've been mulling over teaching a class internally at Google on
> getting started contributing to the Linux kernel.  I think this idea
> (removing dead static inline functions) is perfect for having lots of
> small little tasks that are clear wins.  Do you have any other ideas
> for work that there's a lot of?  Like lots of small little bite sized
> tasks?  Maybe more fallthrough conversion? Anything else?

Some generic ideas:

o look for always unused/unreferenced, or always static
  value function arguments and remove them

o int function returns constrained to 0 or 1 could be
  converted to bool.

And some logging ideas:

o printk to tracing conversions

o removal of printks used just for function tracing
  as ftrace works well

o pr_<level> macro conversions to functions to save
  object space

o singletons for pr_fmt

o default use of #define pr_fmt(fmt) KBUILD_MODNAME ": " fmt
  and removal of the ~1200 current defines treewide

> Happy to have folks use your script and add your suggested by tag.

Suggested-by doesn't have much value to me,
especially for scripted stuff.

I'd be happy enough that it gets done eventually.